Chris Valdez

I’d say most people don’t know or even remember this, but Rain-Man.org was started as a place for both Rainman and I to host programming projects we’d come up with. That never really came to fruition, and instead it became an outlet for me to write rants and random things I’d think of. It also became a place for us to do random testing of web scripts and the such.

As you may have noticed, posting by myself has become infrequent as of late. It’s not for lack of want, but I’m not sure what it is I should write that I think would be worth sharing. Sure, I could write and possibly complain about temp job, or tell you what I had for lunch (a small Greek-inspired salad), but I find that material to be rather dull.

I do want to write again, and I do hope to post more often, but I can’t promise any cohesiveness to it.

This past weekend was my 10-year high school reunion. Over the years, I’ve asked many people I’ve met in life whether or not they enjoyed high school. Myself, I really enjoyed my time there. I don’t recall really being made fun of for my height (though I’m sure it happened a few times). Overall, my memories of those four years are happy and pleasant. It’s unfortunate not everyone can have the same experience, but I digress.

I’ve kept up with many people since then, but there were many people whom I had forgotten about. We met up at a well-known park in town, and hung out for many hours. Food was had, as were many glances at the attractive women who showed up. As luck would have it, most all of them I saw were in relationships. (more…)

I’ve had several people over the past few months asking me to post something on here, but when I ask what I should post, I’m met with silence.

I don’t mind writing on here, I really don’t. But when there’s really been little to nothing of no reasonable interest happening since the last one, I find it difficult to write.

I can give an update of what’s happened the past few months (started a temp job back on March 1, have had contract extended several times; studied Japanese, played some video games), but that’s pretty boring, in my opinion.

My student loan repayments have been progressing OK, though a bit slower than I’d like. Have about $2,800 left at the moment. All my loans combined started around $18,000 with repayment starting around June 2006, so I’d say I’ve made fairly decent progress. But to continue on pace, I’m saying this publicly: do not ask me to go do something that costs money if the entire outing will cost more than $10. Please. I appreciate the invites and offers of accompaniment, but I’m really on a budget. Now, I do like to go out and do things, and I do on occasion, but that’s because I’ve budgeted for it. I’m not trying to be cheap. I’m trying to pay off my loan ASAP and also get money saved for getting to Japan.

I’m not a fan of the temp work I’m doing. Well, let me clarify. The work itself isn’t enjoyable, but my supervisor is a really great person. Incredibly helpful, kind and understanding. My work consists of playing with Excel spreadsheets all day and playing around with survey evaluations for a program the company runs. Internet is really locked down, I’m forced to use Internet Explorer 7 (a browser more than four years old! AAGGGGGH!) and it’s not a social environment due to the arrangement of the cubicles. But it gets me money and closer to Japan, so I stick with it.

I continue to look for more enjoyable work, or at least work that pays the same AND gives benefits. Nothing sucks more than having no benefits and paid time off or paid holidays. Whenever I’m sick or there’s a holiday everyone else at the office gets paid for, I get nothing. It’s pretty crummy.

Today is day 15 of P90X. It’s being going much better than I had anticipated. The downside is that I don’t get to eat nearly as many carbs as I’d like. I love bread, and being told I can only eat the equivalent of two slices of whole grain bread really sucks. I mean, I like whole grain bread (and I’m baking some tonight for the first time), but limiting my intake sucks. Especially when I made such delicious melonpan.

Last week, I became rather bored, so I found someone’s existing website and redid it entirely using CSS and HTML. I figured it’d be a good exercise to re-teach myself some things. During this process, I found that I prefer to work on coding the actual design versus designing the design. That is, if you ask me to draw something up, I won’t feel nearly as comfortable as being handed a layout and told to make it work. Maybe it’ll pass, or maybe that’s just how I am.

Now, print design I still like. =)